"Katherine Kurtz - Heirs 1 - Harrowing of Gwynedd" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

right outside Dhassa's gates."
"Which is precisely why I do not intend us to stay in Dhassa any longer than
we must," Niallan replied. "And that brings us back to the subject of Saint
Mary's. Joram, I know you've abandoned it for the time being. How long do you
think we must wait before it's safe again? When I am ready to vacate Dhassa, I
must have places to send my people."
"Then you'll do better to funnel them through Gregory's new Portal at
Trevalga," Joram replied. "I'll have him show you the coordinates in the next
week or so. From there, it's a relatively simple matter to disperse through the
Connait, where folk are a little more sane about Deryni these days."
"Then for now, you feel that Saint Mary's is out of the question?" asked the
Michaeline Knight.
Joram sighed. "If Alister and Jebediah hadn't been killed so close to there,
we'd be fine. I think I told you all that one of their killers got away. The latest
we hear is that Manfred MacInnis' men have been scouring the area, looking for
some trace of the bodiesтАФwhich makes it a less than desirable place for Deryni.
Frankly, I'm not even happy that Queron is on his way there."
"You expect him soon?" Rickart asked.
Joram nodded. "Any day now, provided nothing else has gone wrong. The
brothers know he's coming, but none of them can speak of it to anyone but him
or one of us. Evaine and I made sure of that before we left. The compulsion
won't stand up against anything stronger than a very cursory Truth-Read, but
we're gambling on the probability that Manfred doesn't have a Deryni working
for him yetтАФand that no one will have cause to suspect that our monks have
anything to hide."
Niallan snorted. "Poor Queron, walking into the lion's den. Do you think he
knows?"
Ansel chuckled mirthlessly. "Well, if he doesn't, I suspect he'll find out, soon
enough."


Indeed, Queron Kinevan certainly knew that soldiers were looking for Deryni by
then, even if he did not know the particular reason. He had been dodging
mounted patrols for days. The night before Joram made his report to his
Dhassa confederates, Queron had taken refuge from soldiers and a gathering
snowstorm by hiding in a rickety barn, burrowed deep inside a haystack. He
was still there, curled in a tight, miserable ball, as dawn lightened a
slate-colored winter sky.
He knew he was dreaming, but he could not wake himself to stop it. In the
fortnight since the nightmare's first occurrence, he had never yet succeeded in
doing so. Fueled by his own memories, the dream seemed to have lost none of
its potency. And whether he tried to sleep by day or by night, some part of it
always found him, always in heart-gripping detail.
It was dusk in the dreamтАФa haunting dusk, two weeks before, as the fires
finally died down in the yard at Dolban. From where Queron crouched to watch
in disbelieving horror, just at the crest of a hill overlooking the abbey, he could
almost imagine that none of it had happenedтАФfor the soldiers had spared the
buildings.
But not its brethren. And therein lay the basis for the quarrel that, for a
time, had set Queron at odds with the younger man hunkered at his side. The